Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Exhibit Hall
Fuel ethanol derived from lignocellulosic biomass is a viable alternative to fossil-fuel-based transportation fuels. It does not compete with food, so it is important as an alternative liquid fuel.
Pretreated lignocellulosic biomass contains lignin-derived inhibitors. Cost-efficient production of cellulosic ethanol by yeast requires the strain that can ferment both hexose and pentose sugars and have a sufficient tolerance to the inhibitors such as acetic acid and phenols.
We have developed the efficient ethanol production from Napier grass with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which was engineered to improve xylose conversion efficacy and tolerance to inhibitors by genetic and evolutionary engineering. Optimizing processing conditions for the pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolyzation and fermentation, we achieved about 70 g/L ethanol production with a jar fermentor under the condition of 20%TS(w/w) substrate loading.